DOCSLIB.ORG

The Personal Past in the Poetry of Robert Penn Warren

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Personal Past in the Poetry of Robert Penn Warren University of Kentucky UKnowledge Literature in English, North America English Language and Literature 1982 Then and Now: The Personal Past in the Poetry of Robert Penn Warren Floyd C. Watkins Emory University Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Watkins, Floyd C., "Then and Now: The Personal Past in the Poetry of Robert Penn Warren" (1982). Literature in English, North America. 33. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_north_america/33 THEN & NOW This page intentionally left blank TIHIEN&NOW The Personal Past in the Poetry of Robert Penn Warren FLOYD C. WATKINS THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Copyright© 1982 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0024 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Watkins, Floyd C., 1920- Then & now. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Warren, Robert Penn, 1905- . 2. Poets, American-20th century-Biography. 3. Warren family. 4. Kentucky in literature. I. Title. II. Title: Then and now. PS3545.A748Z94 1982 813'.52 [B) 81-51016 ISBN 978-0-8131-5523-4 For Anna This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xi A Note on Sources & Documentation xiv 1. Creation & Criticism 1 2. The Penns, the Warrens, & the Boy 16 Cerulean Springs 23 I Guthrie 31 The Family 45 I The Boy & the Poetry 58 3. Guthrie & Cerulean Springs 63 Early Poems 67 I Some Blacks-Two Early Poems & a Sequel 70 I Years without Poems & the New Beginnings 80 I Boyhood 84 I Some Townspeople 90 Some Tragedies 95 I Old Memories 117 4. Now & Then-Father, Mother, Friend, Self 122 Frontier 126 I The Late 1800s 126 I Childhood- The Early 1900s 136 I The 1920s & 1930s-The Mother 145 The 1940s & 1950s-The Father 153 I The 1970s- The Friend 160 I The 1970s & the Past 162 References 171 Index 177 This page intentionally left blank Preface WHEN I ASKED Robert Penn Warren to approve my writing about his childhood, he replied that he did not "intend to write an autobiography," but that he did plan "to prepare a few memoranda probably to be held for a few years." As for my study of his early years and the poems about them, he thought, "Atmosphere is what you'll get and that is thin gruel." I began reading and searching, accumulated a great quantity of information, but acquired very little understanding or insight for a few years. I studied the childhood and collected rumors and facts. The memories of Warren and of the people in the town varied widely, and the discrepancies were so great that in many instances I could only record the unreconciled diversities. I read the poems again and over and over, interviewed Warren, went back to the towns of Guthrie and Cerulean, wrote notes and pieces of chapters and read the poems again and then wrote again. When I finished the account of his childhood, I sent my work to Warren, hoping that I had at least something more than thin gruel. The poems about Guthrie and Cerulean when assembled as a unit contained Warren's created village of the mind and art. No other poet that I know of in the English language (perhaps there are slight resemblances in Wordsworth and Whitman) has created in diverse poems his childhood community or has writ­ ten a chronicle of more than a hundred years of the lives of his family in a number of poems. I can recall no scholar/critic who has been fortunate in the way that I have with this subject: Warren created the poems for the world and then wrote elabo­ rate suggestions for this book-first one by one on the chapters and finally (in just as much fullness) about the study as a whole. Surely no poet can do more for his reader than this. Where there be failures, needless to say, they are mine. This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments I KN 0 W 0 F no critic with a greater debt to his subject than I have to Robert Penn Warren, who wrote the poetry, letters to me, comments on my chapters, and comments on the final manuscript. Mrs. Warren, who is the distinguished writer Elea­ nor Clark, has been personally gracious and kind to me. Citizens of Warren's home town, Guthrie, Kentucky, have given me much time and information, especially Kent Green­ field, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Warren, Evelyn Hooser, Thomas M. Allensworth, Sr., Everett Frey, Tommie Louise Warren (Mrs. R. D.) Frey (niece of Robert Penn Warren), John M. Owen, and Lester Lannom. Others from Warren's native county, Todd, in Kentucky who have been especially helpful are Dorothy (Mrs. Frank) McElwain, and Mrs. Marion Williams. Nan Muth (daughter of Kent Greenfield) and her family have been generous with time and papers. For advice, reading of the manuscript, information, and other kindnesses I am grateful to William Bedford Clark of Texas A & M University, T.D. Young and Walter Sullivan of Vanderbilt University; James M. Cox of Dartmouth College; George Core of the University of the South; Cornelius Cronin, Anna Nardo, and Lewis Simpson of Louisiana State University; John Hiers of Valdosta State College; Robert Andrew and Charlene Ring of Franklin, Tennessee; Eloise Hamill (Mrs. Clarence) Carney, Richard Bourne, and J. R. Claypool of Nashville; Battle Bagley, Sr., County Historian, Fayetteville, Tennessee; and Patricia Wolcott, genealogist, Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky. I owe substantial debts to the librarians of the American Uterature Collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manu­ script Ubrary at Yale University; Marice A. Wolfe, Vanderbilt University Ubrary; the Tuskegee Archives, Tuskegee Institute. xii THEN& Now I have used much information from the oral history projects at the University of Kentucky and at Western Kentucky Uni­ versity. William Marshall and Claire McCann, of the Univer­ sity of Kentucky Ubrary, were of early and basic assistance. Friends of Warren who have been informative and kind are Mr. and Mrs. Brainard Cheney, Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, and Cleanth Brooks. Citizens of Cerulean, Kentucky, the home town of Warren's parents, who assisted me were Hermit Mitchell, Paul Gardner, and Sara Frances Rascoe. Emory University has been generous in giving me time off for research, and the Emory University Research Committee has given me time and support. I received a summer research award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Hugh R. Taylor, of Easton, Connecticut, gave me a much-needed ride on a dark and snowy night. The Emory University Ubrary has provided me with hours of help far beyond the calls of friendship and duty. I am espe­ cially indebted to the Reference Department (Marie Morris Nitzschke and Eric Nitzschke) and the Special Collections (Linda Matthews and Diane Windham). Students, friends, and colleagues at Emory University have endured my talk of my labors and offered many suggestions: Sally Wolff, Rosemary Magee, Oakley Coburn, John Rozier, Harry Rusche, Frank Manley, William B. Dillingham, Trudy Kretchman and her staff. Finally, my wife, Anna, has enjoyed the project most with me, helped me constantly, suffered with me, and shared my triumphs. THEN & NOW A Note on Sources & Documentation THIS B 00 K is based on a unique combination of materials: interviews (oral with notes or tape recordings and even some­ times memory), Warren's corrections and suggestions on early drafts and a late version of the manuscript, government docu­ ments, letters, oral history projects, vital statistics, information on tombstones, and other varieties of usual and unusual aids to a scholar and critic. These materials seem to call for a system of documentation unusual in literary studies. At the end of the book is a list of references, numbered and classified. Throughout the work unsequential superscript numbers in the text refer to the sources listed at the end. Thus what appears to be a strange first footnote (16) is actually a reference to a document listed at the back of the book. In quoting the poetry of Robert Penn Warren, I have used the text in Selected Poems 1923-1975 (New York: Random House) when the passage needed was in that book. Other quotations are drawn from the following volumes, all also published by Random House: Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices,­ Promises: Poems 1954-1956,- You, Emperors, and Others: Poems 1957-1960,- Now and Then: Poems 1976-1978,- and Being Here: Poetry 1977-1980. Creation & Criticism THE EARLY POETRY of Robert Penn Warrenisprecisein its concrete imagery, grounded on the earth itself in the particu­ larity of the experiences described in the poems, psychologi­ cally rooted in fundamental human states of mind. But it is aloof, general in some ways, usually anonymous in its charac­ ters. The relationship between the poet and the poem was known only to Warren, and even though he asserted in later years that some of the early poems were deeply rooted in his personal experience, the poem itself does not provide an exam­ ple or explanation of its origins. In Warren's full poetic maturity, however, he changed his practices.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • James Albert Michener (1907-97): Educator, Textbook Editor, Journalist, Novelist, and Educational Philanthropist--An Imaginary Conversation
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 474 132 SO 033 912 AUTHOR Parker, Franklin; Parker, Betty TITLE James Albert Michener (1907-97): Educator, Textbook Editor, Journalist, Novelist, and Educational Philanthropist--An Imaginary Conversation. PUB DATE 2002-00-00 NOTE 18p.; Paper presented at Uplands Retirement Community (Pleasant Hill, TN, June 17, 2002). PUB TYPE Opinion Papers (120) EDRS PRICE EDRS Price MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Authors; *Biographies; *Educational Background; Popular Culture; Primary Sources; Social Studies IDENTIFIERS *Conversation; Educators; Historical Research; *Michener (James A); Pennsylvania (Doylestown); Philanthropists ABSTRACT This paper presents an imaginary conversation between an interviewer and the novelist, James Michener (1907-1997). Starting with Michener's early life experiences in Doylestown (Pennsylvania), the conversation includes his family's poverty, his wanderings across the United States, and his reading at the local public library. The dialogue includes his education at Swarthmore College (Pennsylvania), St. Andrews University (Scotland), Colorado State University (Fort Collins, Colorado) where he became a social studies teacher, and Harvard (Cambridge, Massachusetts) where he pursued, but did not complete, a Ph.D. in education. Michener's experiences as a textbook editor at Macmillan Publishers and in the U.S. Navy during World War II are part of the discourse. The exchange elaborates on how Michener began to write fiction, focuses on his great success as a writer, and notes that he and his wife donated over $100 million to educational institutions over the years. Lists five selected works about James Michener and provides a year-by-year Internet search on the author.(BT) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
    [Show full text]
  • Dictionary of Midwestern Literature Volume One: the Authors Philip A
    200 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY Dictionary of Midwestern Literature Volume One: The Authors Philip A. Greasley, general editor (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2001. Pp. x, 666. Illustrations,suggestions for further reading, appendix, index. $59.95.) This volume presents, in alphabetical (that is, persons with their origins and/ order, approximately four hundred en- or most lasting affiliationswith the area) tries on individual authors. Each entry and “Midwesternliterature.” This ambi- begins with name, birth and death dates, guity has implications for the usefulness and major pseudonyms, and continues of the volume. Who is represented here, with sections on biography, literary sig- and on what basis? nificance, identification of major works, Anderson’s essay, for instance, con- and suggestions for further secondary cludes with the intriguing note that four reading. The entries are signed and in- of the eight American winners of the clude the institutional affiliations of some Nobel Prize in literature are midwest- one hundred contributors,all members erners: Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Heming- of the Society for the Study of Midwest- way, Saul Bellow, and Toni Morrison. By ern Literature,the project’s sponsor. This geographicaland cultural affiliation and volume is the first of a proposed three by attitude these four belong in this vol- for the Dictionary of Midwestern Litera- ume. The situation is less clear for other ture. Volume two, in encyclopedia-entry figures who also appear: Black Elk, born format, will cover important historical in Wyoming, raised in the northern and research sites, movements, themes, plains, and oblivious to the white man’s and genres; volume three will be a dis- cultural construct of “region”;Joyce Carol cursive, chapter-organized, literary his- Oates, whose connections to the region tory of the Midwest.
    [Show full text]
  • April 2005 Updrafts
    Chaparral from the California Federation of Chaparral Poets, Inc. serving Californiaupdr poets for over 60 yearsaftsVolume 66, No. 3 • April, 2005 President Ted Kooser is Pulitzer Prize Winner James Shuman, PSJ 2005 has been a busy year for Poet Laureate Ted Kooser. On April 7, the Pulitzer commit- First Vice President tee announced that his Delights & Shadows had won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. And, Jeremy Shuman, PSJ later in the week, he accepted appointment to serve a second term as Poet Laureate. Second Vice President While many previous Poets Laureate have also Katharine Wilson, RF Winners of the Pulitzer Prize receive a $10,000 award. Third Vice President been winners of the Pulitzer, not since 1947 has the Pegasus Buchanan, Tw prize been won by the sitting laureate. In that year, A professor of English at the University of Ne- braska-Lincoln, Kooser’s award-winning book, De- Fourth Vice President Robert Lowell won— and at the time the position Eric Donald, Or was known as the Consultant in Poetry to the Li- lights & Shadows, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2004. Treasurer brary of Congress. It was not until 1986 that the po- Ursula Gibson, Tw sition became known as the Poet Laureate Consult- “I’m thrilled by this,” Kooser said shortly after Recording Secretary ant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. the announcement. “ It’s something every poet dreams Lee Collins, Tw The 89th annual prizes in Journalism, Letters, of. There are so many gifted poets in this country, Corresponding Secretary Drama and Music were announced by Columbia Uni- and so many marvelous collections published each Dorothy Marshall, Tw versity.
    [Show full text]
  • ENG 351 Lecture 33 1 Let's Finish Discussing Gwendolyn Brooks. I
    ENG 351 Lecture 33 1 Let’s finish discussing Gwendolyn Brooks. I would like your indulgence to make up for last time. I really was blind. It was — and one of you saved my life, with my visual migraine which sent me into something of a panic. Something else I’ve learned is you should never — you should never read a poem in public that you haven’t read for many years. It can sneak up on you and kick you, and that’s what this poem did. I haven’t looked at The Chicago Defender poem for a long, long, long time. And here I am, half blinded, and then I got emotional at the end of it. So I apologize for that and see if I can get through this with a decent reading. That happened to me one time before with a poem called “April Inventory” by W. D. Snodgrass. And sometimes, you know, poetry has a — has a way of getting to you, whether you want it to or not. But let me — it’s a good poem. It’s only a few minutes long. If you can bear with it, I wanted to get that on in the lesson. This was the poem that I asked Gwendolyn Brooks why she didn’t read it while she was here and she said she no longer liked the ending of it. So I particularly want you to pay attention to the ending of it. She asked me why I liked it and I said because I’m from Little Rock, and then she inquired, “How old were you in 1957?” And when I told her I was eleven, it was okay.
    [Show full text]
  • When Is an Agrarian Not an Agrarian? a Reading of Robert Penn Warren’S “The Rb Iar Patch” Clare Byrne
    Robert Penn Warren Studies Volume 10 Robert Penn Warren Studies Article 2 2016 When Is an Agrarian Not an Agrarian? A Reading of Robert Penn Warren’s “The rB iar Patch” Clare Byrne Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/rpwstudies Part of the American Literature Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Byrne, Clare (2016) "When Is an Agrarian Not an Agrarian? A Reading of Robert Penn Warren’s “The rB iar Patch”," Robert Penn Warren Studies: Vol. 10 , Article 2. Available at: https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/rpwstudies/vol10/iss1/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by TopSCHOLAR®. It has been accepted for inclusion in Robert Penn Warren Studies by an authorized administrator of TopSCHOLAR®. For more information, please contact [email protected]. When Is an Agrarian Not an Agrarian? A Reading of Robert Penn Warren’s “The Briar Patch” Clare Byrne King’s College, London Critics have tended to fall into one of two camps on the matter of Robert Penn Warren’s participation in the Southern Agrarian movement. They have either agreed with Hugh Ruppersburg that “Agrarianism is…the essential premise on which [Warren’s] American explorations have rested” (30), or with Paul Conkin that “never” did Warren “ever write a single essay in which he committed himself, philosophically, to any version of Agrarian ideology” (105). As a result, his literary output has often either been read as a direct expression of Southern Agrarianism, or exonerated from any connection to it. I propose that Warren’s relationship to Agrarianism was much more complex and conflicted than either of these positions allows, and that this is evident even in the essays he explicitly contributed to the movement.
    [Show full text]
  • Program Notes by Michael Moore Rewind//PLAY//Fastforward Performed October 17, 2009
    Program Notes by Michael Moore rewind//PLAY//fastforward Performed October 17, 2009 This evening’s concert begins a season-long celebration of American choral music. The concert opens and closes with music of Charles Ives, that most original and enigmatic of American composers, and also includes Frostiana, Randall Thompson’s superb setting of seven Robert Frost poems. We rewind for a reprise concert performance of David Lang’s deeply moving battle hymns, premiered last season, and fast forward to a preview of Roberto Sierra’s Missa Latina, which Mendelssohn Club will present in its Philadelphia premiere in April. Charles Ives The uniquely eclectic musical style of Charles Ives (1874-1954) was greatly influenced by his father. George Ives was a cornet player and military bandleader in the Civil War, and had returned to his native Danbury, Connecticut where he continued as a bandleader, conductor of theater orchestras and choir director. He had a keen interest in acoustical effects, once marching two bands across the town green from opposite directions, playing different tunes in different keys to gauge the effect, building a device for playing music in quarter tones, and teaching his son to sing in one key while accompanying him in another. He encouraged Charles to experiment with different musical effects, but also instilled in him a love of traditional hymns and tunes, all of which influenced his later music. By the time he entered Yale at 20, Ives was a virtuoso organist and an accomplished pianist and composer. He had already written such significant works as his Variations on America and Psalm 67.
    [Show full text]
  • Philip Roth's Confessional Narrators: the Growth of Consciousness
    Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1979 Philip Roth's Confessional Narrators: The Growth of Consciousness. Alexander George Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation George, Alexander, "Philip Roth's Confessional Narrators: The Growth of Consciousness." (1979). Dissertations. 1823. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/1823 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1979 Alexander George PHILIP ROTH'S CONFESSIONAL NARRATORS: THE GROWTH OF' CONSCIOUSNESS by Alexander George A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Loyola University of Chicago in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 1979 ACKNOWLEDGE~£NTS It is a singular pleasure to acknowledge the many debts of gratitude incurred in the writing of this dissertation. My warmest thanks go to my Director, Dr. Thomas Gorman, not only for his wise counsel and practical guidance, but espec~ally for his steadfast encouragement. I am also deeply indebted to Dr. Paul Messbarger for his careful reading and helpful criticism of each chapter as it was written. Thanks also must go to Father Gene Phillips, S.J., for the benefit of his time and consideration. I am also deeply grateful for the all-important moral support given me by my family and friends, especially Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • James Wright, the Art of Poetry from the Paris Review, Summer 1975
    James Wright, The Art of Poetry From The Paris Review, Summer 1975 Interviewed by Peter A. Stitt Object 1 Early in 1972—following the publication, in April 1971, of his Collected Poems—James Wright was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets. The latter was awarded “for distinguished poetic achievement” by a panel of judges consisting of W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, and Richard Wilbur. Thus, a considerable measure of public recognition was given to a poet already widely admired, especially on college and university campuses. In an age when, much to our loss, many fine poets find their books out of print, Mr. Wright’s earlier volumes—The Green Wall (1957), Saint Judas (1959), The Branch Will Not Break (1963), and Shall We Gather at the River (1968)—all have gone through more than one printing. The following interview took place at Mr. Wright’s Manhattan apartment in early spring. The apartment is on the ground floor, and so, as we sat talking, we were able to look out through the (inevitably) barred windows at the small back garden and see, occasionally, the sunlight slanting between the surrounding buildings. On the first day we held two sessions, separated by a walk in a nearby park on the East River and an excellent lunch prepared by Mrs. Wright. On the second, a misty, rainy day, we held one long afternoon session. On the table between us lay the tape recorder, the interviewer’s notes, a diminishing and then replenished gallon of wine, and Mr.
    [Show full text]
  • Poetry: Three Essays on Craft by O:JA&L Featured Writers
    2020 O:JA&L Subscriber Premium POETRY: Three Essays on Craft by O:JA&L Featured Writers 2020 O:JA&L Chapbook Series OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters 2020 Chapbook Series 2 Three Poets on Craft O:JA&L 2020 Chapbook Series POETRY: Three Essays on Craft by O:JA&L Featured Writers 3 OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters 2020 Chapbook Series 4 Three Poets on Craft © Copyright 2020 All rights reserved on behalf of Claudia Serea, Kendra Tanacea, and Natalie Youing. Compilation copyright is claimed by O:JA&L. No part of this book may be reproduced by any manual, mechanical, or electronic means without the expressed written permission of the publisher. Buttonhook Press Great Falls, Montana Set in Garamond and Castellar and printed in USA. Cover Image: Picturesque Architectonics by Lyubov Popova (1889-1924). Oil on canvas. 80 x 60.5 cm. 1916. Public domain. Source contains a warning in Russian that the painting’s origin and provenance is disputed. 5 OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters 2020 Chapbook Series 6 Three Poets on Craft Acknowledgements: The included essays were all published in O:JA&L between 2017 and 2020 7 OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters 2020 Chapbook Series 8 Three Poets on Craft Contents: Claudia Serea So Sweet and So Cold: Plums and Poems from Romania to New Jersey 12 Kendra Tanacea James Wright: The Alchemy of a Poet 23 Natalie Young The Question of May Swenson 31 9 OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters 2020 Chapbook Series 10 Three Poets on Craft 11 OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters 2020 Chapbook Series Claudia Serea So Sweet and So Cold: Plums and Poems from Romania to New Jersey I would say poetry is language charged with emotion.
    [Show full text]
  • English, American Nobel Prize Winners in Literature. INSTITUTION Kansas Univ., Lawrence
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 058 196 TE 002 709 AUTHOR Phillips, James A. TITLE Modular Curriculum: English, American Nobel Prize Winners in Literature. INSTITUTION Kansas Univ., Lawrence. Extramural Independent Study Center. PUB DATE 70 NOTE 54p. AVAILABLE FROMUniversity of Kansas, Extramural Independent Study Center, Coordinator of Secondary Education, Lawrence, Kansas 66044 ($2.00) EDRS PRICE MF-$0.65 HC Not Available from EDRS. DESCRIPTORS *American Literature; *Authors; College Curriculum; Creative Writing; Curriculum Design; *English Curriculum; Guides; Independent Study; *Literary Genres; *Secondary Education; University Extension IDENTIFIERS *Nobel Prize in Literature ABSTRACT This independent study module treats those Americans who have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. They include Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O'Neill, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Pearl Buck. Selections from the writings of these authors are included. Their works represent many literary genres and also encompass much that man has had to say about his fellow man. (Editor/CK) I. THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS / AT LAWRENCE "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS COPY RIGHTED MATERIAL BY MICRDFICHE ONLY 1-14$PEEN GRANTED BY/I NAAJ uo IL)Q U.N/i 14rdS4-S. TO ERIC AND ORGANIZATIONS OPERATING UNDER AGREEMENTS WITH THE U S OFFICE OF EDUCATION. FURTHER REPRODUCTION OUTSIDE THE ERIC SYSTEM REQUIRES PER MISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OF HEALTH. U.S. DEPARTMENT EDUCATION & WELFARE OFFICE OF EOUCATION HAS BEEN REPRO- THIS DOCUMENT MODULAR CURRICULUM: AS RECEIVEDFROM DUCED EXACTLYORGANIZATION ORIG- THE PERSON OR OPIN- ENGLISH INATING IT. POINTSOF VIEW OR NOT NECESSARILY American Nobel Prize Winners IONS STATEO DO OFFICE OF EDU- REPRESENT OFFICIAL OR POLICY.
    [Show full text]
  • Hip to Post45
    DAVID J. A L WORTH Hip to Post45 Michael Szalay, Hip Figures: A Literary History of the Democratic Party. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012. 324 pp. $24.95. here are we now?” About five years [ ] have passed since Amy Hungerford “ W asked this question in her assess- ment of the “revisionary work” that was undertaken by literary historians at the dawn of the twenty- first century.1 Juxtaposing Wendy Steiner’s contribution to The Cambridge History of American Literature (“Postmodern Fictions, 1970–1990”) with new scholarship by Rachel Adams, Mark McGurl, Deborah Nelson, and others, Hungerford aimed to demonstrate that “the period formerly known as contemporary” was being redefined and revitalized in exciting new ways by a growing number of scholars, particularly those associated with Post45 (410). Back then, Post45 named but a small “collective” of literary historians, “mainly just finishing first books or in the middle of second books” (416). Now, however, it designates something bigger and broader, a formidable institution dedi- cated to the study of American culture during the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. This institution comprises an ongoing sequence of academic conferences (including a large 1. Amy Hungerford, “On the Period Formerly Known as Contemporary,” American Literary History 20.1–2 (2008) 412. Subsequent references will appear in the text. Contemporary Literature 54, 3 0010-7484; E-ISSN 1548-9949/13/0003-0622 ᭧ 2013 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System ALWORTH ⋅ 623 gathering that took place at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011), a Web-based journal of peer-reviewed scholarship and book reviews (Post45), and a monograph series published by Stanford University Press (Post•45).
    [Show full text]
  • SINCLAIR LEWIS' Fiction
    MR, FLANAGAN, who is professoT of American literature in. the University of Illinois, here brings to a total of fifteen his mafor contributions to this magazine. The article's appearance appropriately coincides with the seventy-fifth anniversary of Lewis' birth and the fortieth of the publication of Main Street. The MINNESOTA Backgrounds of SINCLAIR LEWIS' Fiction JOHN T. FLANAGAN SINCLAIR. LEWIS 'was once questioned his picture of Gopher Prairie and Minne­ about the autobiographical elements in sota and the entire Middle W^est became Main Street by a friend 'whose apartment both durable and to a large extent accurate. he 'was temporarily sharing. The novelist A satirist is of course prone to exaggeration. remarked to Charles Breasted that Dr. 'Will Over-emphasis and distortion are his stock Kennicott, the appealing country physician in trade. But despite this tilting of the in his first best seller, 'was a portrait of his balance, his understanding of places and father; and he admitted that Carol, the doc­ events and people must be reliable, other­ tor's 'wife, 'was in many respects indistin­ wise he risks losing touch with reality com­ guishable from himself. Both "Red" Lewis pletely, Lewis was born in Minnesota, he and Carol Kennicott were always groping spent the first seventeen years of his life in for something beyond attainment, always the state, and he returned on frequent visits, dissatisfied, always restless, and although which sometimes involved extensive stays both were frequently scornful of their im­ in Minneapolis, St, Paul, or Duluth, A num­ mediate surroundings they nevertheless ber of his early short stories and six of his lacked any clear vision of what could or twenty-two novels are localized wholly or should be done.
    [Show full text]